I'd like to provide public access, but I don't want trolls and other idiots getting my IP banned everywhere or criminally investigated. What I'd like to see is some kind of VPN-only / proxy-only access to the Internet. The idea is that I'm giving you access but not identity.
You'd be required to proxy through either your own server (ssh/openvpn), the Tor network, or some kind of commercial VPN/proxy service. I mean, you ought to be doing that anyway. All common ports, *especially* http/https, would be blocked.
That doesn't stop someone from ssh'ing into their hijacked zombie computer in Russia and using that to launch an attack, which could still lead to a criminal investigation if they didn't cover their tracks properly, but at least it'll hopefully stop the sysadmins and bots who assume "IP address == person responsible" from reflexively laying down the banhammer on my IP or suing me for allegedly sharing The_Hobbit_An_Unexpected_Journey_4K_xvid_LEAKED_plus_soundtrack.rar
Inexact matches. In the puzzle described in the paper, the pieces are all square (no notches). So the algorithm has to decide which edge matches best based on the similarity of the pixels, but it could be wrong or there may be multiple pieces that look like they match equally well (e.g. sky pieces which look very similar).
In the cases where it's wrong, it may have to throw out some of the fittings -- e.g. if you have a bunch of smaller groups of tiles that seem to fit together, but when you put it all together the puzzle isn't rectangular, then you have to break up the groups and try again. You can't just match one tile and be done with it.
IMHO, sooner or later we're going to need a high speed rail, but it might be better to wait until "later". Right now it's just not cost effective because not enough people would ride it.
I don't think it would be so bad if we waited 15-20 years to start building it. By then, fuel costs and congestion should be bad enough that people will be begging for it and investors will be lining up to finance it.
Also, a *significant* part of the cost of building it right now is that we don't have enough money to finish it quickly. If the state and residents were behind this project 100%, it could have been completed in 10-15 years (or less) for closer to the original projected budget. It's not rocket science. The biggest problems are political.
As much as I'd like to be able to take the high-speed rail in California in the next 20 years (I first heard about putting HSR on the ballot back in 2002), it's just too expensive if we drag it out without being able to fund it right now. California should just buy up all the necessary land and reserve it for future rail development so that it'll be ready when the time comes.
In the meantime, I'm crossing my fingers for the BART San Jose extension within the decade:)
There's a 30% federal tax credit until 2016. California used to have a bigger rebate (originally $2.50/kW, now $0.35/kW) but solar panels are also cheaper now.
I would agree. It might be that a very poorly considered choice of course content was made, and the intro course replaced between years (so the previous intro course made sense as a second course), but really not something that should happen.
Looking back at the old course webpages, it looks like the professor normally taught that lesson plan for his ethics class. He taught the intro course exactly *once* (maybe due to a staff shortage or last minute switchup) but didn't come up with new material.
Off-topic, but regarding self-plagiarism and "duplicate credit":
In college I took an Intro to Philosophy 1 class for my humanities general ed requirement. The next year, I signed up for the second class in the series, on ethics, which had TBD listed for the instructor. On the first day of class, I found out it was taught by the same professor -- and the syllabus was exactly the same as Philosophy 1!
The professor had basically plagiarized his own material for what was supposed to be a different course. For a class on ethics. Seriously. I confirmed with the TA (same TA) that the material was exactly the same and dropped the class (I took a different one later). In retrospect, I probably should have complained to the Dean.
Modern pirates usually go around in speed boats with small arms. I'm pretty sure an island run by a bunch of libertarians would have more than enough firepower to take them out, and no qualms about killing in "self-defense". I suppose they could try to kidnap people off fishing vessels further from the island, but wouldn't put my money on the pirates.
Also it sounds like they're going to build these things near US waters, far away from the typical pirate-infested seas.
A long time ago I wrote a GAIM (Pidgin) plugin as a prank based on the observation that people usually try to avoid responding at the same time by watching the typing icon; if one person is typing, the other person stops typing to give the first person a chance to finish.
The plugin, instead of reporting my typing status, would *mirror* the other person's typing status. So as soon as they started typing, it would indicate that *I* was typing as well. Most of my friends didn't realize what was going on; they would start typing and then stop typing as soon as they saw me typing, at which point it would look like I stopped typing as well; rinse and repeat. Eventually they would just ignore my typing status (which I normally have turned off, anyway).
I think maybe if some kind of financial liability was introduced, companies would take notice. Say, $50 for lost personal details (name, address), $100 per lost cc number, $5000 per lost SSN.
Smaller companies would have to use payment processor companies with better security. Larger companies and payment processors would have an incentive to not just follow best practices and minimum compliance, but actively conduct audits to reduce risk. Insurance companies would also insist on good security, in theory.
Of course, there's certainly downsides. Companies have shown time and time again that short-term profits overrule sensible decision making, even if the costs of risky behavior could bankrupt the company. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of government-mandated compliance if it's not kept to date with the latest technology and practices; time spent on compliance and paperwork could be better spent actually improving security instead of just talking about it.
And insurance companies -- not sure if they're a necessary evil, or just plain evil, and it's also not unheard of for insurance companies to go bankrupt failing to consider the risks.
But in principle, adding some kind of responsibility for losses would probably improve security overall.
OpenJDK is supposedly safe because it's licensed under the GPL, which prevents Oracle from suing over patents as long as OpenJDK is available under the GPL. They could stop distributing it under the GPL for future versions of Java, but revoking the license retroactively wouldn't go over well in courts due to the principle of estoppel.
On the other hand, non-OpenJDK implementations of Java don't carry the same promise.
But in fact, WebOS won't be replacing Windows. After the event, a spokesperson explained that WebOS would probably ship as a customized user interface running on top of Windows, very similar to HP's TouchSmart today. So Microsoft will still get its Windows revenue -- for now.
In the long run, though, HP's move is still bad for Microsoft. Developers build for the platform that lets them reach the most users. Five years ago, Windows was the only native platform (that is, not including Web platforms like JavaScript) that could make developers a lot of money.
Look at the parking lot of a large mall on Google Maps. You could probably fit dozens or hundreds of homes there. A single parking structure takes up as much space as an office building.
And parking structures aren't cheap, either, at around $15,000-$20,000 per parking space.
The Foundation presents nuclear (atomic) power as a religion, allowing their uncivilized neighbors access to the technology without understanding how it worked. Maintenance is done through ritual and ceremonies.
Microsoft could write an emulation layer to run x86 code on ARM. Apple created a 68000 emulator when they transitioned from 68k to PowerPC, and then a PowerPC emulator (Rosetta) when they switched to Intel x86 processors.
x86 isn't as easy to emulate, and the performance would probably be terrible, so it's not too likely. But it's an option if some future architecture beats the pants off x86 enough to make emulating x86 for legacy apps run at a reasonable speed.
I suspect that given a fair amount of time and the right conditions, a highly intelligent non-mammalian life could evolve on Earth, assuming we don't completely trash the place.
Insects and sea creatures are pretty good at navigating using sight/sound/etc which is quite a non-trivial task, and some of them have a basic social structure as well. I think it could happen with other animals in the next couple billion years. Intelligence doesn't always move forwards, but I think it's probably easier than the long climb from single-celled organisms to anything with a brain.
Well, I don't send packages nearly as often as I receive them, and I don't know anyone who takes them other than recycling. So they're not really reusable in a practical sense. I've got more them than I can find a use for.
You can refill plastic water bottles too, but most people don't.
It does take space, though. If the mail truck is full because lots of people are shipping stuff in the mail, they'd either have to do multiple runs or delay getting the package to you package. Or upgrade to those giant delivery trucks that UPS uses.
Besides shipping costs, though, online shopping currently generates a lot of excess packaging. Every time I order something online, I have to toss yet another cardboard box and the plastic bubble wrap in the recycle bin. I'd like to see some kind of reusable packaging.
I think the GPP meant that there's a people who accuse teachers of pushing some kind of left-wing socialist agenda, while at the same time espousing the view that kids (not just their kids, but all kids going to state schools) should study the Bible and learn Creationism and other generally unbalanced and frequently non-mainstream topics.
Not saying that you're one of those people -- maybe you're just opposed to introducing political bias into education in general, regardless of slant -- but it's a pretty strong claim that teachers want to replace "the home, family, and parents as the conduit of social morals". I wouldn't call that bland; it's essentially saying that teachers are shirking their responsibility to children, yes, children. At least you're actually working in a school of education, and not just some random guy on the street with no point of reference.
Now if you said something like "yeah, they're learning to teach knowledge, skills, and abilities, but what really motivates them to be a teacher is to become a mentor who can guide students and give them a proper moral and social compass, which they might not always get from home", that'd be a more positive statement about teachers. It might not be true, but I'd like to believe the truth is somewhere between my idealized statement and your observation.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to provide public access, but I don't want trolls and other idiots getting my IP banned everywhere or criminally investigated. What I'd like to see is some kind of VPN-only / proxy-only access to the Internet. The idea is that I'm giving you access but not identity.
You'd be required to proxy through either your own server (ssh/openvpn), the Tor network, or some kind of commercial VPN/proxy service. I mean, you ought to be doing that anyway. All common ports, *especially* http/https, would be blocked.
That doesn't stop someone from ssh'ing into their hijacked zombie computer in Russia and using that to launch an attack, which could still lead to a criminal investigation if they didn't cover their tracks properly, but at least it'll hopefully stop the sysadmins and bots who assume "IP address == person responsible" from reflexively laying down the banhammer on my IP or suing me for allegedly sharing The_Hobbit_An_Unexpected_Journey_4K_xvid_LEAKED_plus_soundtrack.rar
Inexact matches. In the puzzle described in the paper, the pieces are all square (no notches). So the algorithm has to decide which edge matches best based on the similarity of the pixels, but it could be wrong or there may be multiple pieces that look like they match equally well (e.g. sky pieces which look very similar).
In the cases where it's wrong, it may have to throw out some of the fittings -- e.g. if you have a bunch of smaller groups of tiles that seem to fit together, but when you put it all together the puzzle isn't rectangular, then you have to break up the groups and try again. You can't just match one tile and be done with it.
That's war, not terrorism. Two different things, both horrific. WWII killed a lot more than a couple hundred thousand people.
Google TV currently runs on Atom (x86) hardware. I'm guessing the main issues for broader x86 support are drivers and performance.
IMHO, sooner or later we're going to need a high speed rail, but it might be better to wait until "later". Right now it's just not cost effective because not enough people would ride it.
I don't think it would be so bad if we waited 15-20 years to start building it. By then, fuel costs and congestion should be bad enough that people will be begging for it and investors will be lining up to finance it.
Also, a *significant* part of the cost of building it right now is that we don't have enough money to finish it quickly. If the state and residents were behind this project 100%, it could have been completed in 10-15 years (or less) for closer to the original projected budget. It's not rocket science. The biggest problems are political.
As much as I'd like to be able to take the high-speed rail in California in the next 20 years (I first heard about putting HSR on the ballot back in 2002), it's just too expensive if we drag it out without being able to fund it right now. California should just buy up all the necessary land and reserve it for future rail development so that it'll be ready when the time comes.
In the meantime, I'm crossing my fingers for the BART San Jose extension within the decade :)
There's a 30% federal tax credit until 2016. California used to have a bigger rebate (originally $2.50/kW, now $0.35/kW) but solar panels are also cheaper now.
Looking back at the old course webpages, it looks like the professor normally taught that lesson plan for his ethics class. He taught the intro course exactly *once* (maybe due to a staff shortage or last minute switchup) but didn't come up with new material.
Off-topic, but regarding self-plagiarism and "duplicate credit":
In college I took an Intro to Philosophy 1 class for my humanities general ed requirement. The next year, I signed up for the second class in the series, on ethics, which had TBD listed for the instructor. On the first day of class, I found out it was taught by the same professor -- and the syllabus was exactly the same as Philosophy 1!
The professor had basically plagiarized his own material for what was supposed to be a different course. For a class on ethics. Seriously. I confirmed with the TA (same TA) that the material was exactly the same and dropped the class (I took a different one later). In retrospect, I probably should have complained to the Dean.
Modern pirates usually go around in speed boats with small arms. I'm pretty sure an island run by a bunch of libertarians would have more than enough firepower to take them out, and no qualms about killing in "self-defense". I suppose they could try to kidnap people off fishing vessels further from the island, but wouldn't put my money on the pirates.
Also it sounds like they're going to build these things near US waters, far away from the typical pirate-infested seas.
A long time ago I wrote a GAIM (Pidgin) plugin as a prank based on the observation that people usually try to avoid responding at the same time by watching the typing icon; if one person is typing, the other person stops typing to give the first person a chance to finish.
The plugin, instead of reporting my typing status, would *mirror* the other person's typing status. So as soon as they started typing, it would indicate that *I* was typing as well. Most of my friends didn't realize what was going on; they would start typing and then stop typing as soon as they saw me typing, at which point it would look like I stopped typing as well; rinse and repeat. Eventually they would just ignore my typing status (which I normally have turned off, anyway).
I think maybe if some kind of financial liability was introduced, companies would take notice. Say, $50 for lost personal details (name, address), $100 per lost cc number, $5000 per lost SSN.
Smaller companies would have to use payment processor companies with better security. Larger companies and payment processors would have an incentive to not just follow best practices and minimum compliance, but actively conduct audits to reduce risk. Insurance companies would also insist on good security, in theory.
Of course, there's certainly downsides. Companies have shown time and time again that short-term profits overrule sensible decision making, even if the costs of risky behavior could bankrupt the company. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of government-mandated compliance if it's not kept to date with the latest technology and practices; time spent on compliance and paperwork could be better spent actually improving security instead of just talking about it.
And insurance companies -- not sure if they're a necessary evil, or just plain evil, and it's also not unheard of for insurance companies to go bankrupt failing to consider the risks.
But in principle, adding some kind of responsibility for losses would probably improve security overall.
Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.
Qt is actually LGPL now. Furthermore, if Nokia decides to stop developing Qt, the KDE Free Qt Foundation can vote to release Qt under a BSD license.
OpenJDK is supposedly safe because it's licensed under the GPL, which prevents Oracle from suing over patents as long as OpenJDK is available under the GPL. They could stop distributing it under the GPL for future versions of Java, but revoking the license retroactively wouldn't go over well in courts due to the principle of estoppel.
On the other hand, non-OpenJDK implementations of Java don't carry the same promise.
http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-webos-pcs-will-run-on-windows-not-replace-it-2011-2 :
Excessive warning labels may lead to a distrust of warning labels.
Look at the parking lot of a large mall on Google Maps. You could probably fit dozens or hundreds of homes there. A single parking structure takes up as much space as an office building.
And parking structures aren't cheap, either, at around $15,000-$20,000 per parking space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism_(Foundation)
The Foundation presents nuclear (atomic) power as a religion, allowing their uncivilized neighbors access to the technology without understanding how it worked. Maintenance is done through ritual and ceremonies.
The original story was published in 1942.
It needs some Unicode pictographs.
Microsoft could write an emulation layer to run x86 code on ARM. Apple created a 68000 emulator when they transitioned from 68k to PowerPC, and then a PowerPC emulator (Rosetta) when they switched to Intel x86 processors.
x86 isn't as easy to emulate, and the performance would probably be terrible, so it's not too likely. But it's an option if some future architecture beats the pants off x86 enough to make emulating x86 for legacy apps run at a reasonable speed.
I suspect that given a fair amount of time and the right conditions, a highly intelligent non-mammalian life could evolve on Earth, assuming we don't completely trash the place.
Insects and sea creatures are pretty good at navigating using sight/sound/etc which is quite a non-trivial task, and some of them have a basic social structure as well. I think it could happen with other animals in the next couple billion years. Intelligence doesn't always move forwards, but I think it's probably easier than the long climb from single-celled organisms to anything with a brain.
Well, I don't send packages nearly as often as I receive them, and I don't know anyone who takes them other than recycling. So they're not really reusable in a practical sense. I've got more them than I can find a use for.
You can refill plastic water bottles too, but most people don't.
I was thinking "reusable" more along the lines of http://tote.amazon.com/
It does take space, though. If the mail truck is full because lots of people are shipping stuff in the mail, they'd either have to do multiple runs or delay getting the package to you package. Or upgrade to those giant delivery trucks that UPS uses.
Besides shipping costs, though, online shopping currently generates a lot of excess packaging. Every time I order something online, I have to toss yet another cardboard box and the plastic bubble wrap in the recycle bin. I'd like to see some kind of reusable packaging.
Hmm, what about services? Since most non-retail websites are more like a service, assuming they even charge money rather than operating on ad revenue.
And then there's virtual goods, which you might manipulate entirely on a single server farm in, say, Vermont, even if you live in another state.
I think the GPP meant that there's a people who accuse teachers of pushing some kind of left-wing socialist agenda, while at the same time espousing the view that kids (not just their kids, but all kids going to state schools) should study the Bible and learn Creationism and other generally unbalanced and frequently non-mainstream topics.
Not saying that you're one of those people -- maybe you're just opposed to introducing political bias into education in general, regardless of slant -- but it's a pretty strong claim that teachers want to replace "the home, family, and parents as the conduit of social morals". I wouldn't call that bland; it's essentially saying that teachers are shirking their responsibility to children, yes, children. At least you're actually working in a school of education, and not just some random guy on the street with no point of reference.
Now if you said something like "yeah, they're learning to teach knowledge, skills, and abilities, but what really motivates them to be a teacher is to become a mentor who can guide students and give them a proper moral and social compass, which they might not always get from home", that'd be a more positive statement about teachers. It might not be true, but I'd like to believe the truth is somewhere between my idealized statement and your observation.